First Enquiry in Just 3 Days and 9% Conversion Rate after 2 months with Decisive Marketing

About PHD Building Advisory

PHD Building Advisory is a Bristol-based property and construction consultancy specialising in building surveying, project management and design consultancy. The company delivers complex, multimillion-pound projects across commercial, industrial, education and public-sector environments. Its portfolio includes work for organisations such as the University of Bristol, Theatre Royal Bath and Palladian Academy Trust

The Challenge: Generating Leads From Scratch

Before working with Decima, PHD Building Advisory relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth referrals to generate new business.

While referrals had served the company well, they offered limited control over when new enquiries would arrive or how many potential customers the business could attract.

PHD needed a reliable way to attract new customers without depending entirely on recommendations without taking valuable time away from running their business.

The Solution: Decisive Marketing in Action

Decima2 applied its Decisive Marketing approach to help PHD Building Advisory generate new business enquiries quickly, without creating additional work for its team.

Combining AI-powered tools with human marketing expertise, Decima managed the entire process, from understanding PHD’s business and developing website pages optimised for customers to get in touch, to launching Google Ads campaigns and continuously improving their performance.

Interpret & Ideate

The Free Sample

PHD started with a free sample that gave their initial ideal customer analysis and a scoring of how their content performed for that persona.

From there Decima runs a viability test – does your ideal customer search for your services on Google and do the economics work for your business?

Then we make an initial hypothesis on the best messaging that bridges the gap between what this persona wants and the services that PHD offers – starting with dilapidations and condition surveys. 

Do & Deliver

Website Management

PHD’s website had also remained largely unchanged for approximately three years. Without an active digital marketing strategy, the company was missing opportunities to reach prospective customers already searching online for its services.

We redesigned the landing pages for the targeted services – tailoring it both to the persona insights and the business context as well as migrating the website to WordPress so it can continue to be updated quickly in the future. 

Google Ads Management

Alongside the website improvements, we delivered and launched targeted Google Ads campaigns to reach potential customers actively searching for the services PHD provides.

Decima handled the keyword research campaign strategy, setup, launch and ongoing optimisation.

Report & Refine

Following launch, Decima continued managing both the website and Google Ads campaigns.

PHD receives monthly ROI reports detailing campaign performance and has access to a dedicated account manager for ongoing support and meetings whenever required.

The result is a fully managed service that allows the PHD team to concentrate on delivering their services while Decima takes care of their digital marketing.

What PHD Building Advisory Said

One of the best things about working with Decima is how little we’ve had to do ourselves. We had an initial conversation about our business and the services we offer, and they took care of everything else, from the website to setting up and managing our Google Ads.

Now, we receive enquiries and a report every month showing how things are performing. We’ve got a dedicated account manager if we need anything, but otherwise, it’s all taken care of.

Paul Chappell
Director, PHD Building Advisory

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The Results: Immediate Enquiries and Consistent Growth

1. First Enquiry Generated in Just 3 Days

One of the most impressive aspects of the project was how quickly PHD Building Advisory started seeing results.

Just three days after Google Ads activity began, PHD received its first tracked enquiry.

This speed of delivery is central to Decima2’s Decisive Marketing approach. By using AI to accelerate the development and implementation of marketing activities, Decima2 was able to move quickly from understanding PHD’s business to launching campaigns that generated measurable results.

I was genuinely surprised by how quickly everything happened. From our first conversation to getting the new website pages designed and live, the whole process was incredibly fast. And then, almost immediately, we started receiving enquiries through Google Ads. I knew it would work, but I didn’t expect to see results anywhere near that quickly.

Tom Dewhurst
Director, PHD Building Advisory

2. Monthly Lead Volume Increased by 100%

The initial success was followed by continued improvements in campaign performance.

Between Month 1 and Month 2 of the engagement, the number of tracked enquiries generated through Google Ads doubled, representing a 100% increase in monthly lead volume.

This demonstrated that the campaigns weren’t simply generating an initial burst of interest.

As part of the Report & Refine stage of Decisive Marketing, Decima continued monitoring campaign performance, reviewing conversion data and making ongoing improvements.

Rather than treating the initial campaign launch as the finished product, we used performance insights to guide ongoing optimisation.

This approach supported improving results, with PHD experiencing growing enquiry volumes as the campaigns developed.

3. A 9% Conversion Rate: Understanding the Customer

By month 3, PHD’s Google Ads campaigns had achieved a 9% conversion rate, meaning approximately one in every eleven ad clicks resulted in a tracked conversion.

Decisive marketing closes the loop and enables us to learn very quickly what messaging works. 

Conversion rate is particularly important in paid advertising because every click costs money, whether that visitor becomes a customer or not. A low conversion rate means more advertising budget is spent attracting visitors who never become a customer.

The result was a 9% conversion rate, demonstrating the value of understanding the customer before launching marketing campaigns.